One of the questions we get quite often is the origin of the names of our product lines. In keeping with our Authentically Haiti mission, there is a lot of care and time put into our names. Our hope is that the name is the final touch that will tie together the Haitian ingredients and imagery.

Our cocktail line is named after neighborhoods of Croix-des-Bouquets. When we started the business we partially started it as a push-back to the idea that our hometown (Croix-des-Bouquets), was a traffic-filled, dusty, less desirable part of the Ouest Department. Thus, fittingly, we named every cocktail on the menu of our cocktail bar in 2012 after an area of our hometown. Over the years, we became more strategic with the naming of our products.

Our sauce line is essentially named for what the sauce represents. Our mango pikliz is aptly named “Ay! Ti Manman” like a hot spicy mama of condiments ought to be named. Our Sauce Zansèt is derived from the word for ancestor. Aptly, named because of the almost primitive, ancestorial ingredients, like, raw cane sugar, honey, pineapples, and basil.

Our iced tea is a true labor of love. We started sourcing and researching tea leaves in 2015. One constant with tea in Haiti, is that they are never just a nice tasting tea, that tea is there to cure, ail, or energize something. So our tea names are reflective of their purpose. E.g. Apre Dans (after the dance), is our hangover cure.

Lastly, our hot sauce lines tap into the realm of Vaudau. Named after the family spirits for death and fertility, the Bwav, Gede, Nibo spirits utilize 21 hot peppers in their ceremony. When we decided to use our Haitian hot peppers, we knew we needed to tap this Haitian messaging.

If you were to propose a name for a new line of products for us, what would it be?